I do not believe we ever disconnect completely from those relationships we move on from....thats the reason I believe you can feel the loneliness. Its the full presence of those individuals, that can challenge us to grow, including a possible need to move out and away from them. I am just begining this tribe and the new connections...I am looking forward to new thoughts and concepts.
Blessings!

I've seen this happen many times in my life and in the lives of my friends and colleagues. We are always attracted to those who resonate with us on some level. When you start to futz with your own inner consciousness (i.e. grow spiritually), eventually there is a change and if your friends aren't making similar changes, then the resonance will die out and eventually there's nothing keeping you together.

At some point, you will make new friends who share your newly developed values. In the meantime, it can be lonely because you're basically "in between friends." It takes courage and fortitude to get this far, so you just need to draw upon that same inner strength to stay strong while you wait for and/or look for new connections.

Good luck to you! I'm sure you'll meet some really amazing people soon. :)

thank you for expressing what i have been noticing... this limbo place of not being sociable in the old ways i used to be.
it has led to quite a bit of isolation lately, alternating with awkwardness / discomfort in social situations that i used to be so at home in. three tendencies i have noticed are: increased tenderness/sensitivity (e.g. to loudness, light, drama), decreased interest in the sexual games i used to like, and an inability to fake anything. the direction seems to be towards total transparency, with no filters. that can get pretty messy at work, and fairly unattractive socially. and yet... that is what is happening. i accept it, but have got to wonder, is this it? i admit i am hoping there another social / sexual phase that follows, where everything is integrated.

Veronica,

I know what you mean.

I've been fortunate enough to have a couple mostly awake friends. It is so painful while sharing and speaking from this one-ness as two people when all of a sudden a pattern strikes up in the other person, then they 1.) disconnect 2.) put up mental barrier ... that intimacy of one-ness gets killed

so, what I mean to say is that even if you had such friends, loneliness is still there

I've found nature to be a good friend, much better than I ever thought
since consciousness itself is how we share in intimacy... it is regardless of plant, animal, human as all are from consciousness

this can deepen your knowledge to discover the many beings which live only in consciousness, i.e. non physical... then the world starts getting much much bigger... though that can also be disconnected from the common world... so I found nature to be a good in-between friend.

you can also be-friend the planets and communicate with them, start with the earth and the sun, move onto the moon, then keep going from there. One way is to just feel them, specifically try to see if you can resonate your vibration with them... quiet energizing. A world of revelations awaits... Eckhart doesn't seem to talk much about that; perhaps because he's focused on the shift in global consciousness.

If you focus on growing your knowledge of Consciousness... be feeling and communicating with plants, trees, flowers, animals... soon you can begin to learn how to focus on consciousness itself. It won't be long before you can understand all sorts of things regardless of language.

We are alone so long as we think that language is our means to connect, though language is quiet limited in whom we can speak with.

If you seek consciousness as a method for intimacy, well... your have the whole to be intimate with.

Not to over "spiritualize", yes, some people will just fall away from your life as no longer there will be the stickiness/tension between them and you... you will no longer have karma with them... so you will begin to make friends based on dharma... you will move from making friends based on attachments (commonalities) to non-attachment.

I completely understand. I have great and deep moments of loneliness. But what has helped me the most is finding others which to experience our true connection to each other. Let me try and explain here what those feelings are like and I would like to attempt to try and point out how to actually experience the real connection that we have....The Oneness that we are.

First, I was fortunate to have received a personal invitation from the Oprah Show to participate in the live webcast of "A New Earth" here in Chicago at Border's bookstore Downtown. I had not heard of Eckhart Tolle prior to this, but had been feeling as though I was close to something powerful, but not knowing what. I had been practicing meditation for four years 3 hours per day and was scheduled to attend a Vipassana meditation course at exactly the same time I was attending the New Earth class. What has happend after these two particular events is impossible to put into words....so I won't bother...except to say WOW!

But here's the thing.....when you begin to go through the Awakening process....well....you start to see. I don't mean with judgement or critical or analyiical thinking, but just seeing. And you can see in the faces of others that they can NOT see you. You can see them looking at the labels and concepts in THEIR heads and not actually SEEING YOU. Seeing this all day every day in most of the faces you look into can created deep feelings of invisibility, thus creating feelings of lonliness. The funny thing is that before I began rapidly speeding through the Awakening process, I thought that all the labels, interpretations and opinions that were agreeable to me and others was what truly felt connected. Then all of that flipped upside down! Now when I am sometimes looking in the face of someone and I can see that they can not see me, only the labels in their head, I sometimes, rarely now, but sometimes feel the loneliness you speak of.

Here is my suggestion: Seek groups of people who have turned their focus inwardly. People who truly want to be free of the Ego are developing new eyes. I have found it to be a great delight to serve at the Vipassana center nearest me, not just as a support to those wanting to be free of their own Egoic conditioning, but to also have the experience of looking into the faces of others who seem to have no labels in their heads that is being projected through their eyes. It is the NON-labeling, "look" in the face and voice of others that feels truly connecting and intimate for me. Before this Eckhart/Vipassana experience I never would have believed that a NON-description would feel more beautiful than the list of fancy labels I used before, to experience myself and others.

Also, you may want to look for any "Focusing" groups as well. Google Dr. Eugene Gendlin. He created an amazing technique that is very much like what Eckhart talks about regarding awareness of body sensations. These Focusing groups are all over the world and it is wonderful to be around people who learned to "Be The Space For This" without having even heard of Eckhart-ji.

Hope this helps.

Dear Veronica,

I find it beautiful that you are being yourself more. The thoughts we believed into, the roles which we played, the achieving and goal oriented mentalities, the fantasies and desires, the fears and aspirations, even the very concepts of our sense of purpose, honor, integrity, time, self, God, whatever all disappears. To get this beyond just a mind level down to your heart, to your gut, it transforms your entire life.

New relationships won't be made based on fulfilling needs, so naturally they won't be having that old friendship "bond" feeling. And the years that this transformation is happening in are both disorienting to yourself and for those around us.

If you get a chance, listen to this YouTube video from a Zen teacher based out of California named AdyaShanti www.youtube.com/watch This video is titled Being Alone.